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By Noor Ali
Isiolo, Kenya, October 10, 2009 – Somalia's U.N.-backed government has
recruited more than 170 young Kenyans and former servicemen to help it
fight rebels in the failed Horn of Africa state, local leaders in
eastern Kenya said.
Mohamed Gabow, the mayor of Garissa, told Reuters the enrolment of
ethnic Somali Kenyans was being conducted at a home in Bulla Iftin
village, on the outskirts of his town.
"The recruitment is not a secret. Those involved are not worried. They
are going around all the villages to announce the exercise," Gabow said
in an interview late on Thursday.
Gabow called for there to be an investigation.
"We are raising an alarm. Our community must not be used to kill its kin
or risk the lives of its people."
Local police commander Paul Mukoma dismissed the report as a rumor and
said no official complaint had been lodged.
"No local leader or any parent has come forward to inform us about any
such reports," he told Reuters.
Western donors agreed at a meeting in Brussels in April to give Somali
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's administration nearly $214 million to
help build up a police force of some 10,000 personnel and a 5,000-strong
security force.
But less than a third of the aid pledged to help end 18 years of
lawlessness in the country and in waters off its coast has been
received, U.N. officials say.
Mohamed Khalif, a human rights activist in Garissa, said more than 300
Kenyans had enrolled to fight for Ahmed's government, which is battling
a stubborn Islamist insurgency.
But he said only about half of that number had so far left to fight,
with the rest apparently succumbing to pressure from family and friends
not to cross the border and take up arms.
Washington accuses one of Somalia's two main rebel groups -- al Shabaab
-- of being al Qaeda's proxy in the country.
"We have not asked Kenya to recruit soldiers for us," Somalia's
Information Minister, Dahir Mohamud Gelle, told Reuters in Mogadishu.
"(Kenya's) Northeastern province where the soldiers are being recruited
is not part of Somalia."
Locals say finding more willing gunmen will not be hard for Somali
authorities in a region where marginalization and drought for a fifth
year running is forcing many into severe hunger.
One security source in the area said recruits were being offered 30,000
shillings ($400) a month, while experienced former Kenyan servicemen
were being offered 40,000 shillings.
"Youths in this province are desperate. They can get more who are ready
to take any risk just to earn a living," Khalif told Reuters. "Some have
joined al Shabaab. Many have been killed. They are traveling to their
graveyards in Somalia."
(Additional reporting by Abdi Guled in Mogadishu; Writing by Helen
Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
($1=75.00 Kenyan Shilling)
Source: Reuters, Friday, October 9, 2009
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